crossed the Seine at Poissy, and struck northwards, closely followed by Philip.  He got across the Somme safely, and at Crecy in Ponthieu stood at bay to await the French.  Though his numbers were far less than theirs, he had a good position, and his men were of good stuff; and when it came to battle, the defeat of the French was crushing.  Philip had to fall back with his shattered army; Edward withdrew unmolested to Calais, which he took after a long siege in 1347.  Philip had been obliged to call up his son John from the south, where he was observing the English under the Earl of Derby; thereupon the English overran all the south, taking Poitiers and finding no opposition.  Queen Philippa of Hainault had also defeated and taken David of Scotland at Neville’s Cross.

The campaign of 1346-1347 was on all hands disastrous to King Philip.  He sued for and obtained a truce for ten months.  These were the days of the “black death,” which raged in France from 1347 to 1349, and completed the gloom of the country, vexed by an arbitrary and grasping monarch, by unsuccessful war, and now by the black cloud of pestilence.  In 1350 King Philip died, leaving his crown to John of Normandy.  He had added two districts and a title to France:  he bought Montpellier from James of Aragon, and in 1349 also bought the territories of Humbert, Dauphin of Vienne, who resigned the world under influence of the revived religion of the time, a consequence of the plague, and became a Carmelite friar.  The fief and the title of Dauphin were granted to Charles, the King’s grandson, who was the first person who attached that title to the heir to the French throne.  Apart from these small advantages, the kingdom of France had suffered terribly from the reign of the false and heartless Philip VI.  Nor was France destined to enjoy better things under John “the Good,” one of the worst sovereigns with whom she has been cursed.  He took as his model and example the chivalric John of Bohemia, who had been one of the most extravagant and worthless of the princes of his time, and had perished in his old age at Crecy.  The first act of the new King was to take from his kinsman, Charles “the Bad” of Navarre, Champagne and other lands; and Charles went over to the English King.  King John was keen to fight; the States General gave him the means for carrying on war, by establishing the odious “gabelle” on salt, and other imposts.  John hoped with his new army to drive the English completely out of the country.  Petty war began again on all the frontiers,—­an abortive attack on Calais, a guerilla warfare in Brittany, slight fighting also in Guienne.  Edward in 1335 landed at Calais, but was recalled to pacify Scotland; Charles of Navarre and the Duke of Lancaster were on the Breton border; the Black Prince sailed for Bordeaux.  In 1356 he rode northward with a small army to the Loire, and King John, hastily summoning all his nobles and fief-holders, set out to meet him.  Hereon